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Kids in the Kitchen: Broiled Fish With Chermoula

By Margaux Laskey August 19, 2015 3:34 pmAugust 19, 2015 3:34 pm

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The master plan? Raising children who can be independent in the kitchen, able to prepare a few healthy meals and snacks and with the confidence to tackle a new recipe or task. In our Kids in the Kitchen series, Motherlode’s KJ Dell’Antonia and Cooking’s Margaux Laskey move their very differently aged families toward that goal. Margaux finds ways for her 3-year-old and toddler to help cook, while KJ stands back and coaches her two 9-year-olds and her 11- and 14-year-olds in cooking on their own.

As I mentioned in one of my past posts, my 3-year-old daughter has become increasingly finicky when it comes to food, fish in particular. I thought a flavorful sauce might help. Enter chermoula. It’s sort of a Moroccan pesto, but instead of basil, Parmigiano-Reggiano and pine nuts, it’s made with cilantro, parsley and a combination of Middle Eastern spices. It’s traditionally served on grilled fish, chicken and vegetables, but I can also imagine it stirred into a bowl of chicken soup, a pot of couscous or a pile of soft scrambled eggs. I hoped it would be a brilliant solution; my daughter likes green, leafy vegetables (she happily eats arugula with her soft-boiled eggs and toast in the mornings, and I can’t keep her from nibbling on the herbs outside). And we would get to pull out the mortar and pestle — a kitchen tool my daughter has never used, but I knew she would enjoy. It’s loud, and you get to smash things on purpose.

I wanted to cook the mahi-mahi the way the recipe suggests. I thought she might prefer a lighter-flavored fish over our usual salmon, but all our market had was salmon. We would make do, and maybe the chermoula would act like a green fairy dust. Poof! She would suddenly love salmon again.

I rinsed off the parsley and cilantro and dabbed them with paper towels, then asked her to help me pluck off the leaves. She did so with about three stems before she became bored.

“Don’t you want to help anymore?

“Nooo.” (Lower lip protruding.)

“So you don’t want to bang the mortar and pestle?”

(Big smile.) “Yes, yes, I do.”

I finished picking the herbs while she waited impatiently.

“When do I get to smash things?”

We then “chopped” the herbs using (clean) scissors pointed down into a bowl. She used her kids’ Fiskars, and I used my kitchen shears. She loved this task, and it worked surprising well. I gave them one more pass under the chef’s knife for good measure, but it was probably unnecessary.

“It smells like lemon.” Indeed, the chopped cilantro and parsley did.

Before setting her up at the kitchen table with the mortar and pestle, I threatened that she was not, under any circumstances, to try to lift the mortar off the table. It is incredibly heavy, and if it fell on her, or her sister crawling around on the floor beneath her, we would be taking a trip to the hospital. (Despite their weight, mortars and pestles are pretty great kitchen tools for little children; they need both hands to hold the pestle, so their own fingers can’t get in the way. If you’re worried about them dropping it, put it and your child on the floor. I would have, but I knew her little sister would not be able to resist meddling, so I unleashed the threats.)

I tossed the garlic cloves into the mortar, she sprinkled in the salt, then gleefully mashed away.

I worked it a bit more, then added a handful of herbs. She banged away while I added more herbs. Once we had incorporated all of them, and it resembled a bright green paste, she helped me measure out the paprika (“That’s like my teacher Miss Matrika!”), coriander (ground because that’s what I had) and cumin seeds I had toasted while she napped earlier. I skipped the cayenne because the girls are not into spicy foods yet. She ground all of it together.

She juiced a lemon using our reamer. (“Owww! It got into my cut.”) Then she added the juice and olive oil, and stirred to combine them.

“Can I taste it?”

“Yes.”

Then I couldn’t stop her from doing this.

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“I could put it on your turkey sandwich for camp lunch tomorrow.”

“Do that.”

So far, this seemed promising.

For dinner, I slathered it on a slice of salmon and then roasted it in a 450-degree oven for about 10 minutes. I served it with a side of tiny orange tomatoes we had bought at the farmers’ market earlier that day, and a pile of Basmati rice and chickpeas into which I’d swirled a spoonful of chermoula.

I wish I could say she gobbled it down, but the minute she put a piece of salmon into her mouth (I’ll give her credit; she went for it), her face crumpled in tears, and she gagged. I just have to accept that the girl doesn’t love salmon right now no matter how I prepare it. I will try it with a mild white fish next time.

The good news is that my 1-year old loved the salmon, they both loved the chermoula rice, and we’ve found a condiment to jazz up our meals (bonus points that it’s homemade and green) that isn’t ketchup.

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How Little Hands Can Help: Rinsing and plucking herbs; “chopping” herbs with scissors; sprinkling salt; juicing a lemon; mashing ingredients with the mortar and pestle; stirring.

Skills Learned/Practiced for Older Children: They could pretty much conquer this entire recipe on their own including the handling and preparation of raw fish and roasting it.

Kids Cook Verdict: Two thumbs up for the sauce, one thumb up and one thumb down for the salmon.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more